Making your content work for you: how to create a social media workflow & batch plan your content.
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Content creation is a full-time job, one that most of us are doing without getting paid because it’s an opportunity for us to get our name, brand or service out there and connect with our target audience. However, if you’re investing your time in your content, you better make sure it’s worth it - stop working for your social presence and start making your content work for you.
Step 1: define your why
Let’s cut straight to it - if you don’t know why you are showing up on social media, you are already wasting your own time.
Saying that you’re posting on Instagram or TikTok because you want to grow your followers or go viral just doesn’t cut it. You need to get honest and get real with yourself and understand the purpose behind why you are showing up on these platforms. Is it to connect with your target customer? Is it to increase brand awareness? Is it to connect with a community of like-minded people or others in the same industry as you? Is it to educate or entertain?
If you don’t have clarity on your why then you might just be posting and shouting into the void.
Step 2: identify your target audience
Once you know why you want your brand, business or ‘self’ to have an online presence then you need to get clear on who you want your content to connect with - who is your ideal customer or client and what apps are they most likely to be showing up on? If you’re a business or service then that’s who you want to purchase your products or hire you. If you’re a content creator then this might be a combination of the brands you would like to work with and who they would be selling to. Who are you trying to connect with and what are they looking for?
Step 3: Choose your content pillars
What are your areas of expertise? What are the topics in your niche that you are confident creating content about? Consider your why and your who and then choose 2-3 key content pillars that you could create content on. (examples of content pillars could be: natural beauty, world travel, local travel, home improvements, minimalistic style, mindful self-care, etc.)
Step 4: list all your ideas
grab some big paper, post-it notes or even create a new spreadsheet. At the top write your 3 content pillars and under each list off as many ideas as you can.
Step 5: choose your formats & platforms
For each idea on your spreadsheet or planning paper, decide which format you could best communicate this (short-form video, long-form video, photo, carousel) and which platform it would work best on. You could create a new spreadsheet or grab some more paper and re-list your ideas by format and platform or you could simply grab some highlighters and colour code your braindump.
Step 6: add your ideas to a calendar
Use a notion planner (get mine for FREE below) or simply add your ideas to your Google Calendar. Remember to plan out your content schedule in a way that is sustainable - consider how much time you will need to create and edit the content, mix up your content formats and don’t try to be showing up on every platform every day.
Step 7: have a batch creation day
One a week or even once every other week, set aside a day just for creating, editing, drafting and scheduling your content. Batching means that you can focus all your attention on your content for a short period of time rather than spend big chunks of your time every day editing and posting.
Step 8: repurpose what you can
The real key to a content plan that makes your content work for YOU is focusing on one or two primary platforms and then repurposing everything you create to all the other platforms you show up on.
For example, if most of your target audience is showing up on Instagram, then that’s where you should be investing most of your content creation time; your reels could then be repurposed as TikToks, YT shorts and idea Pins, your carousels and standard posts could be reformatted for Pinterest and your captions could be turned into blog posts. There is no need to be creating fresh content for every platform that you show up on.
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